Okay, this isn't even the birth story. This is how I prepared for the HBAC (Home Birth After Cesarean) of EBB. It's long and probably isn't of interest to every one. However if you are planning a birth after surgery yourself, or just like this sort of thing, I hope it's useful/interesting for you. If you have any questions/comments I'm happy to reply to them*.
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Unless you're being a jerk and then I'll just delete your comment. This isn't a forum - it's a blog.
For the birth of my first child I booked into a hospital home birth program. I thought that this sort of program would offer me a 'safe' middle way between a hospital birth and the 'dangers' or being completely out of the system. I'll give you a moment to collect yourself...
I had a long and exhausting pre-labour with lots of vomiting and no sleep. My MW had just come off a long shift and was in and out of our unit every few hours in five minute bursts. The contractions became more painful but never established. I was told my son was posterior and the labour would be long and painful. My husband and I were panicked and exhausted by the time she said my son was distressed and we needed to transfer. Of course he wasn't in distress by the time we made it in! Then followed an epidural, syntocin, purple pushing for 2 hours, seeing the very top of his head in the mirror they had brought in to show me how to push and then, finally, surgery. I don't know why I could see his head and not push him out. I have no idea why the decision to have a c-sec was made.
After my surgery, like so many women, I promised myself and my future baby that next time would be different. I'm going to be honest though, right up until labour started for my second baby I wasn't sure it would be different in the sense that I'd have a 'proper' homebirth or different in that I'd just book myself in for an elective. And it wasn't until I felt her crown that I really knew that I could birth her.
Time and time again I read in VBAC stories – “I believed in my body,” “I knew I could birth this baby”. I didn't know any of that. I had trusted my body before and it had let me down.
My initial steps forward into an HBAC was decided by my idea that if I really wanted a c-sec I could turn up at a hospital at any point and tell them that's what I wanted no matter what I had previously planned but if I wanted a home birth with an independent midwife (IM) I couldn't leave my planning to the last minute. The local hospital had a successful VBAC rate of 9.8% so I knew booking in for any thing other than repeat surgery was a joke. So with a total lack of gung-ho, confidence or chutzpah I proceeded to plan for my daughter's birth.
I began to search for an IM and through a birth/parenting forum I'm a member of I met the wonderful Rachele. I think the most important thing (but not the only thing!) she provided me with during the pregnancy was the time and space to talk through my son's birth over and over again. Being able to vocalise my memories in the context of being pregnant and preparing to birth again took away a lot of their sting. It also reminded me that my surgery happened for a variety of reasons and while it might be impossible to accurately pin point the place where it went wrong there were reasons and not some bogey man sitting on my shoulder cursing me to have a bad birth.
Despite this I was still very afraid. My fear started out fairly simply – I would go through the same labour and have the same out come. Then it developed into the fear that many women with a previous uterine scar have – a catastrophic rupture. All the statistics showed how unlikely it was, how an unhindered labour and birth were better not just for myself and this baby but for any future pregnancies I might have and yet... I wanted a guarantee. I wanted to know with out doubt that every thing was going to be ok. And cowardly and immaturely, I wanted to be free of the responsibility of the outcome for myself and my baby. If some thing went wrong I wanted to be able to point to some one, any one else and say “you're to blame”. But wherever I birthed, wherever I put my trust it was ultimately my choice and my responsibility – as it is for every other pregnant woman who knowingly or unknowingly makes these decisions. (Obviously this does not extend to cases of genuine medical negligence however as a woman with previous surgery I had to be aware of certain things ie – surgery was more likely than a normal birth if I fronted up to a hospital.)
My husband had more faith in the process than I did. He'd tell me that we were more likely to be in a car accident driving to the hospital than being injured having a birth at home. It didn't help that I was a fairly nervous driver! Finally it was advise from my longest standing friend that helped me to let go: “Every one starts labour at home any way so you might as well stay there for as long as you feel comfortable with that. If you need a second opinion then that's what you have a midwife for. It's silly to do yourself out of some thing you want because you're afraid.” I resolved to play the cards that had been given to me. If every thing progressed normally I would push a baby out where the labour commenced. If not I'd go to the hospital but there was nothing that fear would achieve. This became the theme of my pregnancy – letting go of fear.
I started to accept that there was nothing any one could tell me, any book I could read or study that I could memorise that was going to guarantee me a good outcome. 'Knowledge' was not my talisman against evil. All I could do was stack the odds in the favour of myself and my baby knowing that even a 99% success rate still allows for a 1% failure rate. At 31 it's a bit odd to think of taking further steps into adulthood but I feel that during this pregnancy I became more mature in my outlook on life as a whole.
My local GP was actually of great assistance to me. Every time I saw her – be it for me or my son or husband – she would keep insisting that there were things I 'had' to do. Tests that 'needed' to be done. Things I 'needed' her for. Each time she talked over the top of me, talked down to me, was not able to provide me with further information as to the 'whys' behind certain routines being followed or the potential side effects of tests I became more firmly convinced that having an IM was gold class care and that the current medical model was better suited for cattle than women. Honestly, if she had been knowledgeable, compassionate or in any way interested in my pregnancy beyond it being a mechanical event or in me as a person rather than a potential pathological case I would have struggled with my reasons for avoiding the medical establishment. However, she gave me some thing to 'kick' against and over all I am stronger for having to defend myself. In the end I had two scans to check for the placement of the placenta and I monitored my own blood sugar. I did not have bloods taken and I did not have the GD test. Rachele took my blood pressure each time we met and used a doppler to check the baby's heart beat from around sixteen weeks. I decided on every test I would have or not making my decision based on careful research. Nothing was done 'just because'.
The thought that kept returning to me however was that I simply could not imagine enduring the pain of labour all the way through to the end. I'm not stoic and I don't aspire to stoicism. How could I experience what I was sure was going to be much more pain than my first labour without relief? I prayed a lot. St Jude – the patron saint of hopeless cases - heard from me quite frequently (but we've been friends for awhile :) ). I enlisted other women – one woman from the birth/parenting forum and an old school friend – to pray for me. I thought about Mary freebirthing in a shed full of animals after riding for days on a donkey. And I thought of all of the millions of women before me who had birthed knowing it was literally do or die. They didn't have to think about resisting the temptation of epidurals, they weren't burdened with trimesters or 'post dates', if they weren't dilating at exactly 1cm per hour then they just didn't – you went into labour and birthed because there was no other options. I tried to see myself as being like them. Of course, if I or my baby were at risk I would go to hospital but if I had an intervention it would up the odds of every thing else fucking up. So I had to do every thing in my power to stay at home and stay safe.
I got to 40 weeks. I was frustrated because from the start I felt that this baby was going to be coming closer to 39 weeks. At 40+3 mum called and told me not to let the pregnancy go on too long. Then at 40+4 she rang and asked if it was okay for her to come the next day to spend the weekend with me. This was challenging. It's the first rule of homebirthing isn't it? Protect your space. How could I home birth with a house guest? On another level I felt like this was a vote of 'no confidence'. Mum told me later that she had a strong feeling that she was 'needed'. Mum has often had these sorts of intuitions and they're right often enough for me to have learnt not to roll my eyes when she says it.
Then I figured that this was just life. Mum comes to stay quite frequently during the year and it's always good to have her here. So what if I'm expecting to go into labour? I wasn't planning on putting any other part of my life on hold so why shouldn't my mother visit? I also figured that if I were really uncomfortable with her staying I just wouldn't go into labour at all! Mum promised to vacate to a hotel if labour started and I told her that she wasn't to stress me out while she was here :)
So mum arrived on the Friday afternoon. I was not expecting anything to happen until the following Tuesday. That night, at 40+6, I was woken about 6 times with period like pain in my abdomen...
To be continued...
